Advertising in the last century, print advertising specifically, showcased life as it was lived across the western world. Advertisements simply announced the better mousetraps, how they were better and where they could be purchased. Consumers did beat paths to advertisers’ doors, at least to those whose messages were presented creatively.

And that is what this website is all about. It is not an anthology of great advertising. It doesn’t sell. It tells stories, called posts today on websites like this, about advertising creativity in print media of the past.

Explore the stories, marvel at the creativity or lack of it, compare these print advertisements with today’s commercials on broadcast media, and shed a little tear for days gone by.

Over the past 15 years, the United States has lost 2,100 newspapers, leaving at least 1,800 communities that had a local news outlet in 2004 without any at the beginning of 2020.

In only two decades, successive technological and economic assaults have destroyed the for-profit business model that sustained local journalism in the United States for two centuries. Hundreds of news organizations – century-old newspapers as well as nascent digital sites – have vanished. By early 2020, many survivors were hanging on by the slimmest of profit margins.

Use the link below to read about it in the fourth report by the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media, documenting and analyzing the loss of local news and its implications for democracy.